Friday, September 3, 2021

A Totalitarian Pipe Dream

Before leaving Norway for good, I had to pay an exit tax on the house I sold. It hadn't been my primary residence for the last two years prior to my exit, so all my profits on the house sale were to go to the state. However, the money was already transferred to Portugal, and all my assets were transferred to my wife and children. I was the official owner of nothing, so there was nothing for the state to confiscate in case of my non-compliance. Hence, I declined to pay the exit tax.

A deciding factor in this was to consider the worst case scenario. Without any assets to confiscate, the Norwegian state could at most arrest me and put me in jail. However, that would require coordination with the Portuguese state, and the last thing a bureaucrat wants to do is to deal with another bureaucrat in another country. It would be a costly and difficult procedure, and there would be nothing gained. I'm not a public figure. There's no glory in parading me around as an example. The only thing gained would be an extra inmate in one of their jails, and Norwegian jails are nothing to fear. They are cushy places with free food and entertainment. At the most, I would have to spend a year in such a place before being allowed back to Portugal.

As it turned out, the taxman quickly gave up on me. Without anything that he could confiscate with a few keystrokes on his computer, he gave up on me, and I haven't heard much from him since. I get a note every year detailing my debt to the state of Norway, and that's it.

I have no bank account or any other electronically registered assets. Everything is owned by my wife and children. I'm therefore in a position of great freedom. No-one can confiscate anything from me. If they fine me and I refuse to pay, they will have to put me in jail, and that's a cost on them; not on me. More likely than not, they will let me go.

I sold my house in Norway more than four years ago, so this arrangement has been in place for a while now, and we haven't had any problems with it. On the contrary, my wife and I are noticeably better off now that we're paying less in taxes. However, this arrangement hinges on the fact that I had sufficient wealth back in 2017 to retire. I'm not employed by anyone, and hence not required to be part of the system in order to earn a living. But for anyone in my position, I can highly recommend this arrangement, especially in times of tyranny.

Most people cannot break away from the system as much as I have, and I have only been able to do what I've done with the cooperation of my wife and adult children. However, there's a lesson to this that anyone can take advantage of. Breaking away from the system as much as possible comes with great rewards. Done correctly, there are less taxes to pay and more freedom to enjoy.

The benefits afforded to those who are disconnected from the system become all the more evident during times of tyranny. Not having a smartphone becomes a blessing. This tracking device is central to the current plan to enslave us, and the solution to this is to not own such a device. Saving money in metals rather than a savings account is another blessing. The state cannot confiscate our savings, and they cannot inflate it away through money printing.

Under total tyranny, the best position is to own nothing but metals, and to rent everything else. But we're not there yet. My wife owns an apartment where we live. That's still the most economic arrangement. However, if they start taxing real-estate to the point of making it uneconomical, we'll sell this place and rent instead. The money received from the sale will be put into more metals, where it will remain until the tyrants give up on their impossible quest for total control.

The problem with total control is that it requires people to put up with so many inconveniences that it's better to find ways around it. A stay in jail becomes better than compliance. Alternative systems become attractive. That's when the tyrants lose control, and their dystopian vision of the future becomes exposed as the pipe dream that it always was.

Three Surveillance cameras.jpg
Surveillance

By CC BY-SA 3.0, Hustvedt - Own workLink

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